New British Law Allows Same-Sex Civil Partnerships

LONDON, Dec. 5 - From Brighton to Birmingham and beyond, gay andlesbian couples began registering today for the first ceremonies laterthis month permitting a form of same-sex marriage in Britain.

As a new law permitting what are called civil partnerships came intoeffect, at least 1,200 couples scheduled ceremonies to take placebeginning Dec. 19 in Northern Ireland, Dec. 20 in Scotland and Dec. 21in England and Wales.

"This is an important piece of legislation that gives legalrecognition to relationships which until now were invisible in theeyes of the law," Meg Munn, a government minister, said.

The Times of London, once the staid voice of the establishment,extended the "Births, Marriages and Deaths" column in its Court andSocial Register pages today to included a new category "CivilPartnerships." In it, two male couples and a female couple announcedtheir intentions.

Some of the first to register were couples in longstandingrelationships like Roger Lockyer, 77, and Percy Steven, 66, of centralLondon.

"Britain has been in the Dark Ages over this, but today we have madethe first step into the 21st century," Mr. Steven, a former actor andlecturer, told the Press Association news agency.

The largest number of registrations, 510, was recorded in Brighton onthe south coast. In a sampling of registrations elsewhere, 140 couplesregistered in central London and 5 in Aberdeen, in the north ofScotland.

The law allows gay couples in civil partnerships to benefit from someof the same financial advantages as heterosexual couples - like taxbreaks on inherited real estate and pension rights. The ceremony willresemble civil marriages between heterosexuals performed in a registeroffice.

But a broader significance was seen by some of those registeringtoday. "It is very important to the heterosexual community to realizethat there are homosexual couples and give them their due rights," Mr.Lockyer said.

Homosexuality is still a divisive issue within the Anglican church,and soccer crowds have been singled out as instigators of homophobicabuse. Generally, however, homosexuality seems more accepted than ageneration ago. The British military lifted a ban on openly gay peoplefive years ago.

The rock star Elton John has announced plans to enter into a civilpartnership on Dec. 21 with his longtime partner, David Furnish, a43-year-old filmmaker.

"It is a major, major change," Mr. Furnish said in a recent interviewwith the gay men's lifestyle magazine Attitude. "It is one of thedefining issues of our times. And I applaud Britain for embracing thediversity of our society."

Across Europe, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have, like Canada,enacted laws legalizing same-sex marriage, but other countries offergay men and lesbians forms of partnership with more restricted rightsthan heterosexual marriage. In 1999, France introduced a civilcontract for cohabiting couples irrespective of their gender, andGermany has enacted legislation for "life partnerships" for gaypeople. Elsewhere, South Africa's highest court ruled last week thatthe prohibition of same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

In the United States, federal law does not recognize same-sex unions,and many states define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Butothers have introduced their own legislation.

Same-sex marriage is now legal is Massachusetts. Connecticut followedVermont last September in recognizing same-sex civil unions, andCalifornia has a broad domestic partnership law.